It turns out that shotou has the following definitions:

• 諸島 archipelago; group of islands
• 初頭 beginning
• 蔗糖 cane sugar; sucrose
• 初冬 early winter; 10th lunar month
• 初等 elementary; primary

So I'm not sure what being American Shotou Jeanne would be all about, although the 'early winter' definition makes me think of a Champions character who is an ice projector. Or of Snow-in-Harvest, Shadow Lord kinfolk whose ambition was to become a skindancer. He was tired of being on the bottom of the Shadow Lord hierarchy, and tired also of knowing that he and Richard (whom he served, and was fiercely loyal to) would never be peers. Somehow he believed that being a skindancer would even all of this out, allowing him & Richard to have a partnership unmarred by hierarchical concerns. Never mind that if he was revealed as a skin dancer he'd probably be hunted down & killed -- somehow the practical implications of this plan never quite hit him. Perhaps because I never actually played him -- he came together just as I was really quitting RP mudding, so he never ran up against any reality.

I'll save American Shotou Jeanne in the back of my brain, to be pulled out the next time I'm creating a super-hero style character.

I had a nice weekend, full of random things, which was as it should be; this was the weekend dedicated to having no plans so that spontaneous fun could occur. Friday night we had dinner at Rangoon, which was fun but a bit frustrating due to how long it took us to be seated. Having dinner in downtown Palo Alto on a weekend night is usually tricky, but Rangoon has always been the exception. No longer! Now it's popular, and with our group of six we had a forty-five minute wait. They were really lovely about it, though. After dinner we went to Double Rainbow for dessert, and I had a decent egg cream (it did not compare to the egg creams at Cantor's -- but LA has to have something going for it other than the topiary dinosaurs in Santa Monica), and more conversation until we fled home and flopped about in happy randomness.

Saturday we slept late, then got up and went to downtown Palo Alto (the Mayfield one, not the University one) so Jim could check his mail and I could buy kosher meat. When we got home we stopped by Rachel & Jeremy's to drop off a box for Rachel which had been accidentally left on our doorstep (we live next door to one another, so these things occasionally occur), and also to drop off Rachel's long-overdue Hannukah present. Rachel wasn't there when we arrived, but Jeremy was, and Harold had dropped by, so we spent a lazy afternoon talking to Harold and Jeremy, and playing with Miriam. Rachel showed up about halfway through and was very gratifyingly surprised & pleased by her present. Towards early evening Chrisber & Christy showed up, back from IKEA where they'd not only bought many rugs for their new duplex, but had picked me up some extra bookcase shelves. More conversation ensued, and then we went our several ways with plans on the part of Chris* and ourselves to reconvene later for dinner. Jim read email and cleaned the kitchen some while I made five-spice ice cream (wich turned out rather well despite some technical errors on my part), and then Chris* came over and the four of us went to Kamei for a nice dinner. After dinner they went home and we watched a bunch of OAVs: The Fashion Boy is Cool, which was an extremely cute shoujo romance, and Makendo, a not-very-good parody of mahou shoujo, and Christmas in January, which was a lovely character study of a pretty messed up girl, and finally Sequence, a time-travel romance from the late 80's.

Sunday was in comparison a quiet day; Jim gardened a lot, I gardened a little, I made us breakfast in mid-afternoon, read some, and drove to Berkeley, drove back from Berkeley, and watched Pinky and the Brain and Animaniacs until it was time for sleep. All in all a good weekend. Next weekend is Amber High School on Saturday & helping Chris* move on Sunday; I'll probably feel overly busy with it all but it should be good anyway.